Promised Land' authentic, except for ending

Sometimes you just want to see an honest movie. Not a documentary, mind you, with its talking heads and vital arguments. But a well-wrought drama that feels genuine as it goes about spinning a tale worthy of our challenging times.

Until it pulls a fast one late in the story, “Promised Land” is such a movie.

Matt Damon portrays Steve Butler, a natural-gas company rep who, along with his partner in sales, played by Frances McDormand, travels the rural countryside buying drilling rights to farmland.

The start of the film finds Steve singled out for a promotion by company execs. He and Sue (McDormand) sell more leases at a lower price point than any of the other teams. He’s very good at what he does, but humble, too.

Steve knows the kind of people he’s selling to. He came from a small Iowa town that died the slow death of economic downturn and changing times. He also appears to be a true believer in the benefits he’s bringing them. His empathy hasn’t been tainted by the issues surrounding the type of drilling Global Crosspower Solutions uses to extract gas from oil shale: hydraulic fracturing, or as Coloradans are all too familiar with, “fracking.” (In fact, the town of Rifle gets a shout-out.)

Damon co-wrote the movie with co-star Krasinski. (It’s based on a story by Dave Eggers.) And “Promised Land” is the third time the star has teamed with director Gus Van Sant. Their first effort was “Good Will Hunting,” which Damon penned with Ben Affleck.

The filmmakers don’t place McKinley in a particular state. Though the film was shot in a Pennsylvania county of beckoning hills and farms, McKinley is intended to be Anytown, U.S.A.

The movie looks good and moves well as Steve and Sue banter with each other like siblings and do the sales dance with the locals. An amusing scene finds them shopping for the right clothes (props?) in a convenience store that boasts on its sign “Guns, Groceries, Guitars and Gas.”

But it doesn’t take much time working the households of the town of McKinley for Steve and Sue to know their customary come-on isn’t a slam dunk.

Hal Holbrook is in full-on charming codger mode as Frank Yates, a former R&D engineer for Boeing who spends his retirement as the town’s high school science teacher. At a town meeting in a gymnasium, he encourages his friends and neighbors to put to a vote whether Global is the right thing for McKinley’s future.

That’s just the first sign of a kind of push back Steve wasn’t prepared for.

Things becomes bitterly funny when the ridiculously named Dustin Noble, played by Krasinski, shows up. The scruffy, affable environmental activist also has deep roots in rural America, and he’s just as deft as Steve in using his biography to bend the ears of McKinley’s citizens.

McDormand brings deadpan wit to Sue. She’s a pragmatist, with a son at home with whom she Skypes. She’s got a job to do and does it effectively.

Rosemarie DeWitt plays Alice, a school teacher who catches the interests of Steve and Dustin. She’s smart and connected to the land.

Indeed, “Promised Land” does a careful job honoring small-town America. Sure, there are people who want to sell in hopes of keeping their family farm — and making the killing Steve more than hints at. But they’re not rubes (with one exception). Like their neighbors, they did the research; they just came to a different set of conclusions.

To reveal the flaw in the script would spoil the movie. Yet, Damon and Krasinski’s narrative twist threatens to sour much of the measured and even-handed storytelling that came before.